Something Else
by annapooh
Summary: It is a strange thing, anger. It can be caused by many things: sorrow, loss, discomfort, uncertainty. By definition, anger is “a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism”. Although, anger can also be a bizarre way of covering something else


A/N: Yo! Well, yeah . . . read this . . . it's okay . . . I'm not sure if it is going anywhere but whatever . . . I felt like writing . . .

* * *

It is a strange thing, anger. It can be caused by many things: sorrow, loss, discomfort, uncertainty. By definition, anger is "a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism". It comes from the Latin word _angere_ meaning "to strangle" and is akin to the Old English _enge_ meaning "narrow". It is a general term with the synonyms of more specific words such as ire, rage, fury, indignation, and wrath. Although, anger can also be a bizarre way of covering something else. Something usually deeper inside than most people may see. Something that is not even anger at all. It is all described in one word. A word with so many meanings, that it can sometimes be misunderstood or hidden. A word that is most commonly described as suffering. This word is passion. 

As Hermione sat in her usual cushioned chair in the Gryffindor common room, her back aching as she leaned attentively over her homework, she tried as hard as she could to clear away all the little noises that always made her go insane: the tapping of owls on the windows as someone received a letter, the childish whispers of the first years gossiping in the corner, the irritating shuffling of the papers as other Gryffindors attempted to do their homework. Today it seemed unbearable from the agonizing headache throbbing at her temple. She tried to focus on the tiny words of her textbook, but it only made her head hurt worse.

The sun shone bright through the windows as it slowly set, the light blinding her if she looked in the general direction. It had been a hard day, and Hermione could not wait for it to be over. She had homework in every class and still had to finish knitting her caps for the poor house elves. She could not bear the thought of not leaving enough caps for all who cleaned the common room. Pushing herself harder, she made herself read the paragraph she had been working on for quite a while three times. Even after that, however, she still could not focus on anything except the horrid noises.

Slamming her book shut – which earned her a few looks from the ones studying around her – she packed up her things, slung her bag over her shoulder, and strode out of the common room. The Fat Lady looked very taken aback as she barged through the portrait hole, but Hermione did not care; she needed solitude. The corridor was empty as she made her way towards the Room of Requirement, the one place she _knew_ she could have everything she needed. The hallway echoed as her rapid footsteps hit the floor, not helping her headache much. She quickly turned a corner, not exactly looking ahead of her.

Suddenly, WHAM! She clashed head-on with something coming the opposite direction. Falling backwards onto the ridged floor of hard stone, the contents of her bags spilled in all sorts of directions. She felt her head hit something hard, and she stopped struggling to get up. She felt weak and never wanted to get up from the spot where she had landed. Her eyes clouded and began to blur as two heads looked down at her. She could not see them strait, but she heard one say, "Hermione are you all right?" and automatically recognized Ginny Weasley's voice. She did not even try to sit up.

"You sure were going fast," another voice said who she puzzled out to be Harry. Her head hurt even worse, but now in a different place. "Come on, help me sit her up," Harry told Ginny after a moment of just lying there. Her vision was still all blurred, and she could not find the strength to stand up yet, so Harry and Ginny resorted to propping her up against the wall.

Suddenly, she heard something stir on the floor not too far from them. "No, it's all right you guys, I'm fine. I'll just help myself up," said a disgruntled sounding Ron. It must have been him that she "bumped" in to. As she looked over, she saw a blurry figure slowly stand and rub his head. Her vision was coming back but not as fast as she would have liked. She let her head roll back against the wall. Ron soon joined the other two around her.

"That sure was a nasty spill, you took," Ron said, still rubbing the back of his head. "Knocked me down too." Her vision was cleared enough for her to see the concerned look on her friend's faces, yet she paid more attention to Ron.

"Sorry, I was sorta in a hurry," she explained hazily trying to push herself up. She knew she needed to get somewhere – that was why she was walking so fast – she just could not recall where. Ron quickly put a hand on her shoulder, though, and eased her back down. "Better if you stay there," he explained as she relaxed once more. Her head hurt so badly.

"We should probably take her to the hospital wing," Ginny said after a moment. "You too," she directed at Ron. "Come on, help me get her up." Ginny, Ron, and Harry tried to take her arms, but Hermione shook them away and used the wall to get up. Her head spun for a few moments when she was upright, but she regained her wobbly balance and walked down the corridor once more, slowly. Ron, Ginny, and Harry followed, eyeing her uneasily as if she would fall at any moment.

Regaining her full sight back, she noticed that her three companions were still in their Quidditch uniforms and remember that they had been at practice. She also remembered that she had been looking for a quiet place to study before she fell, and still wished she were; she needed to finish her homework.

The Hospital Wing was further away than she had imagined and seemed to take ages to find. All the corridors looked the same to her now, and the paintings and statues seemed to be the same thing. She remembered where she was going, though, and tried to get there as fast as she could, her friends following her close behind.

Arriving at the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey, looked at Ron and her in surprise. "Now what happened to you two?" she asked in a stern yet concerned tone, examining Ron's head.

"I was turning a corner and Hermione came crashing into me and knocked me to the ground," Ron explained in a casual, all-knowing voice. He was bleeding a little on the back of his head, but it did not seem to bother him much.

"It didn't happen that way," Hermione said outraged. "_I_ was turning a corner and _he_ crashed into _me_!" she argued. Madam Pomfrey began to examine her head and frowned as she did at Ron's.

"Are you mad?" Ron yelled in reply. "I wasn't the one who was bloody running down the hall!" He put his fingers on the wound on the back of his head and cringed at the blood he had touched. Hermione frowned.

"I had a headache!" she explained harshly. "I was trying to get to a quiet place to study!" Madam Pomfrey led her over to one of the beds and motioned her to sit.

"You must have bumped your head a little to hard because you are not making sense," Ron said shaking his head at her as Madam Pomfrey led him to another bed.

"Oh stop your bickering," Madam Pomfrey said calmly as she pointed her wand at some kind of cloth and strapped it to Ron's head. She did the same for Hermione and told them that they should probably stay there for the night, just to be sure that they are perfectly stable.

Hermione tried to think of something to change the subject. "Ginny, would you bring me my homework?" She gestured to the bag that Harry had picked up after she fell, and Ginny quickly brought it to her. Hermione did not do her usual thing of automatically pulling out one of her books and studying, but she still set the bag down beside her bed and layed back onto her pillow. She quite enjoyed the beds in the Hospital Wing, but it was nothing compared to her bed in the Girl's dormitory. She tried to snuggle herself between the covers, but the pain in her head caused her to not find any comfortable position.

"I'm hungry," Ron said from the bed next to hers. They had not eaten dinner yet, and usually Ron could not go an hour without eating _something_. Hermione could hear his stomach growling, and it made her realize she was hungry as well.

"Oh stop complaining," she said, a little harsher than she had wanted. Harry and Ginny were still in the room, and they gave her a strange look.

"What's gotten into you?" Ron asked, a little confused. "One moment you're fine and the next you are all grumpy." Hermione sniffed. She had just been knocked to the ground, hit on the head, dragged to the Hospital, and told to stay there the night. For how her day had been going, she was in a good mood. She told all of this to Ron, who replied, "My day hasn't been all hunky-dory either, you know. I had to sit through four of the most boring classes in the history of the world, spilled pumpkin juice on my robes at lunch and had to go change them, fell off my broom at Quidditch practice, _and_ slammed to the ground by you!" His voice grew louder and louder at every word, to the point where it was a full-blown shout as he finished. Hermione glared at him and turned over in her bed, facing the opposite direction. She heard a ruffle in the sheets of Ron's bed and figured that he had done the same.

"Well, dinner has already started," Ginny said as if to change the subject. "Harry and I will visit you afterwards." Harry uttered a quick "See you" and they both left the Hospital Wing without another word, probably wanting to escape the palpable tension between its only customers.

It was only about five minutes later of silence when Madam Pomfrey entered with two trays in her hand. She placed one on the table next to Hermione's bed and the other on the table next to Ron's. Almost instantly, the crisp smell of apple pie and warmed pumpkin juice filled Hermione's nostrils and almost made her drool. She quickly grabbed a roll off of the bronze tray and stuffed it into her mouth. She refused to look at Ron – he had made her so angry – but she suspected he was doing the same as she heard the rapid chewing of a chicken leg in his mouth.

After Hermione had shoved all the contents of her tray into her mouth – why had she been so hungry? – she leaned over the edge of her bed and grabbed her school bag. Taking out her Transfiguration book and some parchment, she attempted to start on her essay of turning an amphibian to a reptile. Using examples such as a frog turning into a lizard, she forced herself to write whatever seemed to come into her head about what she had learned earlier. Professor McGonagall had shown them how in class, and Hermione could do it effortlessly, but she missed some of McGonagall's lecture by trying to explain it to Ron. Hermione glared down at the paper she had been writing on. It was Ron's fault that she could not finish her essay. He had kept her from listening! The nerve of him!

Taking a deep breath and letting it out again, Hermione told herself that it was not at all Ron's fault that she did not know the material as well as she would have liked. She had offered to help him, and if Hermione remembered correctly, Ron did not really _want_ any. It was also not his fault that they had crashed into each other: Hermione had been walking entirely too fast. It was not his fault that they were not speaking at the moment either. Hermione had been in such a bad mood that she took it out on him. Nothing that had happened today was Ron's fault.

Hermione smiled a little down at her parchment. She felt as if she was going crazy with anger, but there was something else there that she did not recognize. Something that made her insides want to float to the ceiling. Something that little by little overpowered her anger and made her smile. She looked over at Ron's bed. He was still facing away from her and eating. Hermione did not think it possible for her to eat faster than Ronald Weasley, but she dismissed that quickly. He must have finished because he placed his tray on the table of which it had been given. He was so quiet where he lay, and Hermione could not help but think of how peaceful the Hospital Wing was. Her anger had dispersed as she looked over at him and she sighed.

"Ron," she said tentatively. He grunted in some sort of reply and Hermione continued. "I'm . . . sorry for yelling at you," she said hesitantly. He had frozen where he lay. "It was not right for me to blame you for something you did not do," Hermione finished. Ron turned over this time and looked at her in utter confusion. She smiled at his lack of comprehension of what she was doing and even chuckled a bit.

"Okay . . . ," he said, still puzzled. It seemed to Hermione that he was trying to push down a grin that snuck up onto his face. He succeeded and his face remained to be pure confusion. Hermione almost was disappointed; she liked it when Ron smiled. He seemed to have one of those grins that could light up a room and cause everyone in that room to grin as well. It was highly contagious. Well, at least for her.

"So how was Quidditch practice?" Hermione asked to break the somewhat awkward silence. Ron told her all about how Harry had made the whole team shoot at him, and that he seemed to be getting much better. He also told her how Ginny was measuring up to be a great Chaser. He also threw in the part where he slid of his broom for no apparent reason. He smiled with that and Hermione could not help but smile also. She felt quite content with this whole mess now.

* * *

A/N: Well, that was kinda long . . . a good five pages at least . . . Wow . . . when I started writing this, I had no idea where I was going with it . . . I guess it shaped out all right . . . I might continue but I'm not sure if I want to yet . . . Well, later!

annapooh

P.S. "Say what you want. Say what you mean. Question yourself are you really what you seem. Say who you are. Say what you mean. Question yourself are you really what you dream." - Dispatch


End file.
